(Editor’s Note: The Husband says this is my “smuggest post” ever. Sorry! I totes don’t mean it that way. It’s just that I love living here so much. And I loved my lives in Winnipeg and Minneapolis so much that I honestly didn’t think lightning could strike three times like this. Fortunately, “loving where you live” isn’t a zero sum game and you, too, can find a pocket of “Portland” wherever you are where the pressure is low and the love for simple things is great. If you’re not sure where that might be, look up your local urban Mennonites – they’ve usually got a head start in those areas.)
A few weeks ago, my friend/cousin (fruzzin?) was visiting and she remarked, “No wonder you love it here. Portland totally suits you guys.”
That thought’s been rattling around in my head ever since. We *do* love it here – but why? Why does this place feel like home already, so much so that when the plane landed from Memphis, I felt a surge of relief at “being back”?
I think that our experience of Portland so far can be summed up in this one pic:
A summer concert, everyone relaxing outside and listening to great music and drinking good beer, and one guy is having such a good time he spends the entire time standing and clapping along and nobody. cares. at. all.
Portlanders are all about living the good life. They love experiences and spend their time pursuing pleasure. Not in a hedonistic or decadent kind of way, but more just enjoying the everyday.
The most obvious here is the treatment of beer and food. I tried searching for “Portland brunch” once, and I got over 3000 hits.
(I’ll save you some time – it’s Screen Door for the win.)
Beer is a religion here. This is John’s Marketplace, our local place of worship:
(The first row is only Portland beer. Then it moves to Greater Portland, West Coast, Rest of US, and then Global in the back. You can buy Kokanee in the Canadian section! Not that you would, of course. Yesterday I had the most amazing quad that was basically the love child of a Belgian monk and a Manhattan.)
Heck, even the GAS STATIONS have taps where you can fill your growlers:
And you’re never more than a stone’s throw from amazing food to go with your choice of libations.
(The pic on the left is the outdoor patio at the little butcher shop about six blocks away. Come for the small-batch cured meats, stay for the local cheese plate lovingly prepared by my bestie, Amy the Butcher.)
In some places, this kind of enjoyment of food/drink would come with a healthy serving of pretension, but honestly, I haven’t seen much of it (or else I’m just so much of a precious hipster myself that I don’t notice). Portlanders take their food seriously, but not themselves.
The dress code in Portland is decidedly “casual.” Anything goes, but it’s typically jeans/flannel-adjacent. A few months ago The Husband was treated to a man wearing a one-piece lady’s swimsuit on his bus ride. (And that’s all he was wearing.) If I wear a dress to the grocery store, I get admiring looks (I even had a lady stop to tell me “you are so elegant” as I waited in line to pick up a prescription. It was just a basic dress I’ve been wearing to work for years.)
(The Girl especially loves the sartorial freedom. She’s applauded for dressing authentically here, where at her old school they made fun of her. Granted, she *was* wearing this giant onesie, but this outfit was a total non-issue here.)
Portland loves a party, too. This year was the first annual Mermaid Festival (which coincided nicely with Pirate Days so when I went to the market after my haircut I saw both Ariel and Captain Jack Sparrow). Opening a bridge after months of construction? Better inaugurate it properly with a weekend festival complete with live music and (the ubiquitous) food carts:
And, of course, there’s the awesomeness of being completely bathed in Nature. There’s a forest and/or a mountain and/or a waterfall around every corner.
Plus the OCEAN is a quick drive away.
One of the offshoots of valuing new experiences and not taking themselves too seriously is that Portlanders have a really positive attitude toward trying new things. When we moved to Minnesota, we looked into starting The Boy into hockey. But at age 6 (SIX!!!) he was already too old to join any of his friends. They’d all started at three. And were doing seven ice-times a week, out-of-state tournaments, and year-round camps before they were teenagers.
Here? The Boy was able to start with almost no knowledge of the game and quickly found himself a house league where he’s learning and hanging around with a bunch of other kids at the same level. He loves it, and his parents love that it’s only a few times a week and there’s no pressure on him other than to try hard and have fun.
Or consider The Girl. She’s discovered that she loves working with metal and wood. And between a blacksmithing apprenticeship and being a TA for her woodshop teacher, she’s got loads of opportunities to hone her skills.
Portland is definitely weird. They funnel their civic pride into the local soccer team and the entire endzone is a sold-out, standing-room-only, two-hour bacchanalia of beer and chanting known as the Timbers Army.
(The game was hilarious. During the National Anthem, everyone fills in the pauses between the lines with a “pssssh” sound and does this flingy thing with their Timbers scarves. When someone scores a goal, this massive lumberjack man fires up a CHAINSAW and saws a round off this huge tree and parades through the stands with it.)
Even a neighbourhood walk yields signs of the strange.
(That’s Claire, the neighbours’ chicken. She lays incredible eggs. She’s also “the smart one” and knows how to get out of the backyard, but she just takes herself for little walks and then happily returns home.)
And the pace of life here is so relaxed. One time I ordered food at a food cart (the grilled cheese one! Our fave) and the girl asked if I’d just moved to Portland. “You talk so fast! I’m from Iowa so I’m used to it, but I’ve had to sloooooow right down since I moved here. It’s strange to hear that again!” Nobody’s in much of a rush and there’s no desperate need to chase success.
(Literally “time to smell the roses.” And pet neighbour cats.)
The tag line for Portlandia is that Portland is “where young people go to retire.” I don’t think that’s truly possible any longer – jobs are few and far between and the housing costs don’t allow anyone to live on a part-time barista’s salary anymore. HOWEVER, that ethos is still here. This sense that life isn’t about constant striving or keeping up with the Joneses or spending all your time papering the walls with diplomas or racing to the next status level. The people here are smart and passionate, but they are also quirky and content.
Smart, passionate, quirky, content…yeah, I’m guessing there’s a reason we fit in so well. 😉
prairiegirl transplanted 